[markvdb]

> Latvia is predominantly Russian-speaking.

This seems to imply the majority of residents of Latvia speak Russian natively. That might have been correct had the USSR existed a bit longer, but history took a different turn.

"Most Latvian businesses, especially in the Riga area, will happily serve you in Russian." That would be a more neutral and correct statement appropriate for this context.

Also relevant would be how Latvian government is publicly angling for Belarussian businesses willing to relocate to Latvia [1].

Regarding native tongues in Latvia... Currently, over 30% of Latvian residents speak Russian, Belarussian or Ukrainian natively, versus 62.3% Latvian. In Riga, the number of Russian, Belorussian or Ukrainian native speakers rises to over 43% [0] versus 47.1% Latvian.

[0] http://data.csb.gov.lv/pxweb/en/iedz/iedz__iedzrakst/IRG080....

[1] https://eng.lsm.lv/article/economy/business/belarusian-busin...

[sam_lowry_]

Having being in Latvia a few times and knowing the historical context... I distrust Latvian language statistics.

Still, even those statistics admit that Riga is mostly Russian-speaking [1]. This is where the IT crowd would land, anyway.

[1] https://www.csb.gov.lv/en/statistics/statistics-by-theme/pop...

[usego]

As the resident of Riga have to add that it depends on age. Young native Latvian people tend to avoid learning russian (but actually they have to while living in Riga). Also there is a constant goverment level pressure to ignore russian as a vital part of latvian life so you will always feel that you are not welcome in many places like the oficial institutions. But actually you could live for years there not speaking any latvian word :) Also it is worth to mention that english is starting to be more and more important (even more important than latvian) in daily life for IT people as foreign people in teams are much more usual now even than 5 years ago.